Friday, April 06, 2007

No wires attached

I helped coach some of the speech kids before they went to Nationals- which meant I got to hear all of their speeches. One that was a mixed bag was the persuasion from the kid who's really the best overall competitor about personal internet security.

It made me decide I ought to check out some more info on it. There's a blog that seems to have a lot of info on wireless LAN security. It's clear there are a lot of things I really should do differently- but I wasn't too surprised that it seems I'm doing most things pretty much right.

There's a step by step on how to secure your wireless network, which is helpful. It's a bit bloated in some ways and seems to have more info than is needed, but don't let it intimidate you it's a pretty easy read. The big thing I've been worrying about lately is that WEP encryption though not perfect is far better than nothing. One thing it recommends that I don't do is changing encryption keys often. Were I in a more easily compromised environment (a company with a parking lot where people might pull up, or within range of the street and wardrivers) I would probably be more concerned.

In full disclosure, one reason I'm reviewing the site is because they have a contest to win a free router for writing a review of the blog. It's one that looks pretty cool, not too advanced, but the usb print server on it would be really nice. To be eligible I'll have to put the blog up in my blogroll- which really isn't a big deal since I think most people probably ought to look more at how insecure most of their actions on the internet are and what they can do differently.